Artists' works bear witness to drug violence on the border

Updated 4:44 pm, Monday, November 4, 2013

Alice Leora Briggs' “La Ventana,” a woodcut with chine-collé, is a life-size portrait of Santiago, a resident of a Juárez asylum.

Alice Leora Briggs' “La Ventana,” a woodcut with chine-collé, is a life-size portrait of Santiago, a resident of a Juárez asylum.

Photo: Courtesy Southwest School Of Art

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Artist Alice Leora Briggs

Artist Alice Leora Briggs

Photo: Courtesy

Artists' works bear witness to drug violence on the border

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On trips to Ciudad Juárez, artist Alice Leora Briggs recognized the coping mechanism residents used to get by in the Mexican border town that has become synonymous with drug cartel violence.

It was the same one her parents relied on when Briggs' older brother was killed as a teen in a mountain climbing accident.

“There was this incredible denial that really anything was wrong,” Briggs said. “Some of that was for the sake of survival, like if you were in your neighborhood and you saw a hit, it would probably be wise to behave as though you didn't. So there were certain aspects that resonated with my own state of mind.”

For the past few years, Briggs has made Juárez the subject of her work, going to the city morgue and crime scenes.

“La Linea,” an exhibit of Briggs' woodcuts and sgraffito, or scratch drawings of Juárez, is on display at the Southwest School of Art. It is paired with “Baroque on the Border,” an exhibit of paintings by Rigoberto A. Gonzalez, which likewise bears witness to the harsh realities of life in the drug war zone.

Kathy Armstrong, director of exhibitions, said one of the reasons she decided to exhibit the artists' works is because they are dealing with important issues.

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“It's had good attendance,” she said of the exhibition, which opened in September and closes Sunday. “It's also had repeat attendance, so people will come and then they'll come back. It's a very difficult imagery and topic, so I think sometimes people come and are surprised, but then they think about it and come back.”

Briggs was doing an art residency in New Mexico, a short drive from the border, in 2008 and 2009, just before the murder rates in Mexico skyrocketed. In Juárez, she visited the morgue and known cartel death houses.

In the foreground of the drawing “Necessary Tools,” the carcass of a butchered pig is splayed on an examination table with an array of cutting instruments. In the background, the body of a man wearing a pig mask hangs from a grate on display as a warning to passersby. In “Levantado,” the contorted body of a kidnap victim lies in the trunk of a car.

Recently, Briggs was asked by the producers of the radio show “This American Life” to create an image to accompany a story about an unknown woman who shot and killed two bus drivers in Juárez. Someone called “Diana, Hunter of Bus Drivers” claimed responsibility in an email to a local paper. In Briggs' piece, the shooter is represented by the Greek goddess of the same name.

Currently, Briggs is collaborating with Mexican journalist Julián Cardona on “Abecedario de Juárez,” a book documenting the vocabulary of Juárez in words and pictures. Briggs' title image is a contemporary take on Hans Holbein's “Alphabet of Death.”

“You know how Eskimos have umpteen words for snow? In Juárez they have I don't know how many different words for the different ways somebody can be burned,” she said.

In contrast to Briggs' chilling, gritty images, Gonzalez's work has an operatic feel with dramatic lighting, stage-worthy tableaux and a velvety palette. But while Gonzalez's aesthetic is rooted in the 17th century, his subject matter is of the here and now.

Born in Reynosa, Mexico, Gonzalez grew up along the border, playing drug smuggler with his toy trucks as a child. Currently, the 40-year-old artist makes his home in Harlingen, where he teaches art.

“There's so many amazing stories happening in this area,” Gonzalez said. “People complain there's nothing going on, but there's this constant struggle for survival here, people risking everything they have.”

“La Guía” depicts a teenage girl guiding a middle-aged couple across the river. Holding their few belongings aloft, the man and woman look toward an uncertain future as the teen urges them forward.

Gonzalez painted some of the works in the exhibit while doing a fellowship in Roswell, N.M., including the epic “Balacer en Reynosa.” A 10-foot by 20-foot piece on three panels, the painting depicts the aftermath of a shooting. While the victim's loved ones lament, and soldiers armed with automatic rifles make arrests, a pair of musicians compose a
narcocorrido, or drug ballad, on the spot.

Gonzalez works from reference photographs, enlisting people to enact the scenes he plans to paint. Gonzalez's smaller works, including a series of decapitated heads, are also effective. Lushly painted, the death portraits draw in viewers who might turn away from photographs of the same subject. That is what Gonzalez wants to do.

“If you hear sound bites on the news, sometimes you just hear that the cartels are beheading people, and just the sound of that is enough to (make people) not want to look farther into it. But I think it's something you need (to do),” he said. “For me, as an artist, I need to make people really look and I try to do (the paintings) in a way that is appealing, that is compelling to people through the lighting, to the way it is re-enacted, because it's a huge story.”

“La Linea” and “Baroque on the Border” continue through Sunday at the Russell Hills Rogers Gallery I & II on the Navarro Campus of the Southwest School of Art. Call 210-224-1848; go to www.swschool.org.